Update: Dan Moskowitz, the lead game engineer for SimCity read the letter and gave me some thoughts on twitter. The conversation is at the bottom.

Dear Maxis, and anyone else involved in the creation and launch of SimCity, First, I would like to apologize. Earlier this week I went on a twitter rant against you, and the difficulties you had with the launch on Tuesday. I'm sorry that I ended up being so flippant and angry- it is one of twitters biggest weaknesses: there is rarely room for nuance and explanations. That is why I am not yelling at you there anymore; I never wanted to yell, and I never could get my point across on twitter anyway.

The other reason I came across as angry is because I was. I love Maxis, and you hurt me. I love your games, and have been waiting for this Simcity since it was announced- I have a new computer and would get to posh it to its fullest playing a game I love. I was in one off the Beta tests a few weeks ago, where we heard the data would protect against server overloads, and that always-on was was needed to run the complex simulation. I listened, because I trusted you.

You broke that trust. First, at this point we all know that you did not do suitable load-testing. You have MORE than doubled the number of servers, plus disabled features to reduce bandwidth, and the problems still persist. I would think if you tested enough, and as long as the suits who decided how much to spend on servers listened to your tech team, you would have had enough bandwidth to cover at least 75% off your users, not below 40%. It seems like the better way to do this would be with a soft launch- If you pre-order before March 1st, you get to play the game starting on March 5th, otherwise its March 13th. That way you know EXACTLY how many people have code, and you can REALLY learn what play styles are like before it goes public, and adjust accordingly. I would have hoped that after things like Diablo something like that would be common.

Second, You do not need a connection to run the simulations. How do I know? If the server did the work, you'd expect your screen to freeze, like it does in any FPS when the server that does all the heavy lifting losses connection. I played the game for 45 minutes on Tuesday WITHOUT a server connection, after it dropped mid-game. And the only thing that didn't work was leaderboards, global market, region play, and saves. These are not three game, these are extras (well saves are not, but those could be made local easily enough).

You lied to me, and that hurt.

The more you SLOWLY are trying to fix things, the more obvious it becomes that whoever made the call about always on cares less about a good SimCity and serving customers than making a game that wouldn't be pirated, AT ALL COSTS. The focus, according to a tweet this afternoon, was on Multiplayer, and the game wasn't intended as single player, which is also why it is always on. That is more than a minor departure from both the past iterations of the game and from the way the game was presented. We were shown a sequel to a game that was always single player, which now had the ability to be more fun playing with friends, but would still be great single player. This is evidently a game that was a multiplayer game that would also function as single player experience. That seems like a subtle difference, but in practice it is anything but. With limited water tables in some cities, you have no choice but to run multiple cities just to have basic services for cities running in the long term. Is it still fun? Sure, but is it SimCity? No.

It's SimCity Online. It should have been titled such.

Enough of why I feel my trust has been broken, and lets get to some nuts and bolts issues I have right now.

Always-On Limitations

There are certain things "missing" from SimCity that I had assumed were design choices, but now seem like they were purely cut because of server-load issues.

City size seems like an obvious one here. If you go in a city with much topography, there isn't enough room to make a single error in layout and still have a functional large city. I have a city right now that hit a hard wall, and I have no where to build. My only option is to start a sister city to handle services and sell them to my main city so I have extra room. This is an issue. And its an issue Maxis has said will be addressed down the line. To me, this means either: It was held back to limit server crush at launch, OR it was held so EA could get Microtransaction money from selling large cities down the road (Which would be a TERRIBLE misstep at this point, by the way).

An non-existent Undo button is another BIG problem. While I get that maybe you think the bulldozer is just as good, you're wrong. My first city was in a region with a group of IGNers. I had great hopes, and wanted to contribute to the group. I laid my first main road down the center of my land, going up a hill, and as an avenue so I could Street-car it later. It was a worthy 20,000 investment. Until I panned to the side, and it was a bridge THE WHOLE WAY. It was useless. I bulldozed it, and only had 20,000 left to found a city. By the time I got me city setup the way I wanted, and could have with 50,000 and an undo button, I had $300 in the bank and a $40,000 bond to pay back. MAYBE this isn't in the game for some other reason. But I'm guessing it is because it would screw with the regions as the game is constantly updating to the server. And its a BIG problem. Roads snap to stupid places at times. If they do, I should be able to fix it. If you don't want to add/cannot add an undo button, give me the option of turning on "confirm road layout" where after I snap a road in, I can pan around, look at it from different angles, and make sure its not a waste of money, before I hit CONFIRM and it gets built.

The issue is, if you gave us two gameplay modes from the start, a single player and a multiplayer, and large cities were only available in single player because they were off-server, all these problems could be fixed. And that doesn't seem like too much to ask for in a game that has ALWAYS had these functions.

Always-On Faults

Then we get to the biggest problem with Always-On systems. When they go off. Maybe it's because my Internet got taken out in a recent hurricane for a week, or maybe I'm flying across the country, or maybe your servers crashed, or were shut down because someone didn't want to pay for them anymore, but at some point, I will want to play the game I bought, and I won't be able to simply because of this system. It's shortsighted at best. Every year EA shuts down servers for the online portion of old sports games. I get that, you can still play the game with local multiplayer if you want, or with single player. But what happens in 5 years when EA shuts down the servers, and I want to show my future son the city I built to introduce him to SimCity? A connection error, and no game. An Always-On system puts an artificial end-date to game functionality where it has no need to be. Again, if there was a multiplayer mode, and a single player mode, so I could still boot up my massive singleplayer city that I had saved locally? No problem. But I won't even be able to do that as it stands.

How I felt during the time I DID get to play SimCity. Mostly Happy, but partially pissed off.

Lack of Communication

A complete and total lack of communication during the first 4 days of this problem was shocking, and ridiculous. I really don't understand how this isn't the way it went down:

Tuesday 12:01AM - Servers are up! Have at it! *basically happened

Tuesday 12:15AM - WOW! You guys our housing our download servers! We're trying to get more download bandwidth, and in turn more server space up and running for the game to meet demand. Please be patient guys!

Tuesday 1:45AM - OK, we have a some extra space to download, but it will take some time to get the game servers to catch up with the INSANE demand you guys are flooding us with, We are humbled, flattered, and sorry.

Tuesday 5:00AM - We really are flattered and embarrassed by how unprepared we were for this. We crunched the numbers, and expected 500,000 people to be playing today, so we did enough servers for 600,000. 1.5 million of you are trying to play. We are working as fast as we can to let you all in!

Tuesday 7:00AM - We turned off Cheetah Speed, Achievements, and some other small things to increase effective server bandwidth. New servers should start coming up this afternoon. Turning off those options effectively allows room for 120,000 extra players ATM, and and 20,000 more than otherwise with each additional server added.

Tuesday 1:00PM - OK guys, we just added NA East 3. NA West 3 should be coming shortly. Each server should let another 120,000 of you in. We plan on adding 8 servers in the next 4 days to try to keep up with load. This isn't a fast process unfortunately, but we will keep you up to date.

Seriously, how hard would that have been? Tell us the problems, tell us more then that we played longer than expected.

Earning our trust back

Today Lucy did an hour or two of responding to player questions about the problems that we've been seeing, and was actually fairly honest it seemed. This did help, but it seems like something that should have happened two days ago. And last night you announced that we will get one of a selection of Origin games for free as a peace offering. While I appreciate both of these efforts, there is still one MAIN problem with this approach.

I Don't want another game, I want FUNCTIONAL, REAL, MOBILE, LARGE SCALE SIMCITY.

I want the game that I have been waiting a year for, and I want to do at least as much as the game I played of the same name from 2003. If you want my trust back, add a single player mode, allow local saves, and give me larger cities.

I'm sorry, but you disappointed me this week. -Dangeresque92

UPDATE:

Twitter conversation in reply the the letter:

-@Moskow23: I read it, sorry we let you down with the servers.

-@Moskow23: The games do simulate in the cloud, a stream of actions get sent up and then reapplied to the server state of your game.

-@Moskow23: As for no undo, that is not a missing feature, but a design choice that I'd still stand behind.

-@Dangeresque92: thanks for the read! I really do love the series, and the game. Feel as bad for you about the launch as for us fans.

-@Dangeresque92: cool, didn't seem like anything vital came from server worth the connection drop. I'll update in the AM with this though.

-@Moskow23: To clarify, the client simulates the city, and the actions it takes are sent up to the server, which reapply them to the save

-@Moskow23: There is also a 'game' for the region, which exists on the server, and it simulates there based on inputs from other games.

-@Dangeresque92: As for no undo, that is not a missing feature, but a design choice that I'd still stand behind.

-@Dangeresque92: That I'd have to argue against, as its far to easy, especially with curving roads, to think something lines up and wasting cash

-@Dangeresque92: I hope you do understand that my overall msg is that I love the series, and the game, and just felt let down by a couple of things

-@Moskow23: I think your main point stands, don't release a service until it's ready. Have you read Lucy's latest?

-@Dangeresque92: I just did. And I really do appreciate you taking the time to read, and now converse with me about it.

-@Dangeresque92: I'm a landscape Architect,so I totally Get timeline constraints in a creative profession and that final output is never EXACTLY on

-@Dangeresque92: I do hope to see an offline mode sometime soon, but look forward to dropping a ton of time into the game as is too. Thanks again!

I have to say, while some of the answers were not what I would have hoped for, the current level of communication, and effort they are putting out, is above and beyond what I would have liked from the start. It's not too little, too late in my mind, I think it is an effort that is legitimately helping rebuild some trust, at least from me.

I still think Always-On is extremely flawed, and doesn't really work with the infrastructure level we have throughout much of the country, to the point that I think it takes about 1.5 points off my interest level on a 1-10 scale. My interest in SimCity was a 10. With Always-On it's an 8.5- I still god it launch day, but I didn't need to spend extra on deluxe edition, etc. Other games wouldn't be so lucky, however. I recently got Ni No Kuni on PS3, and I love it. Before I bought it, however, my interest level was around an 8.0. If it had Always On, It would drop to a 6.5, and I likely never would have played it, or I would have waited until it was on sale for $20 or less.

This is what Always On systems do at this point- they stop piracy, sure, but they always stop people who would have purchased your game from purchasing it. There are a TON of people who got burned at the launch of this game. They may buy other games with Always-On in the future, but the number that pre-order or buy it the first week will drop- Word of mouth will drop, and total sales will drop. Until this system can be done in a way that is so seamless as to not exist in the player's mind, or at least it will be more than cancelled out by the benefits of the system, it's going to be a major issue for the industry.

I've been toying with reviewing my current-gen games for a while, but kept putting it off for no reason in particular. Then, on Tuesday, I wrote my review for Far Cry 3. Spoiler: I love it. Then the review disappeared into the vapor. No Bueno. So I figured now is the time to go to my back collection, and start doing some quick hit reviews of games I played this generation.

First up: Little Big Planet

This game absolutely surprised me. I am a "creative professional", and as such, I am always looking for a good outlet of my creativity. I also love a good platformer. This game managed, on it's own, to be the best platformer since Mario 3, in my opinion. Some hate on the "floaty" controls, but all those things make it feel more old-school to me. the fact that you could adjust Mario's direction in midair is part of what made the game WORK. A decent single player story, with lots of goofy characters, and bright colorful world brought me right back to the days on my NES, back to what made me fall for videogames in the first place.

Then you add in the level creator, which has now made literally MILLIONS of levels? It is simply amazing. Is every level great? Of course not. Does every level have at least a bit of heart in it? Yes. There is a reason I was first in line at the NYC Sony Store for the launch of Little Big Planet 2, where I got to play the game with people trying to set a world record for almost an hour, meet Jeff Rubenstein (AKA Zombie Blognack for the IGN fans out there), and get some nice signed swag. But mostly, it was to thank Media Molecule for the first game I got a platinum trophy for.

Gran Turismo 5

This game is a tricky review, as it is so hot and cold in so many ways. Are you using a control, or a wheel? Do you have a TV for sound, or a sound system? Do you care more about the realism of the driving, or do you want a smooth experience? Each of these could effect your feelings for the game to a large degree on their own. Together they can create a huge difference. I happen to have a decent 6.1 sound system, a racing wheel with force feedback, and I LOVE a sim racer. To me, Gran Turismo 5 is ALMOST everything I wanted. The cars sound, and FEEL great. You can, with a feedback wheel, really feel the moment your tires are about to lose traction because you are pushing to far. You can feather the throttle perfectly into a corner, and throttle up JUST SO on the way out to get even more grip without oversteer.

Even for me, however, the UI and menus seem straight out of GT 2. Some things are better, but a racing series that really guides you through most of the series in the game would be a huge improvement.

And from what I hear, if you don't have a pretty good sound system, the audio can get pretty mediocre. Not a game changer, but it can be an issue.

All in all, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a sim-racer, but not an arcade racer fan. It's not... fun... in the same way Mario Kart 64 or Need For Speed Underground was. It's fun in the way Battletoads was. It kicks your ass, without cheating, and makes you want to keep going back to shave off seconds, because you are making yourself better, and the challenge itself is a BLAST.

inFamous

The first inFamous was the second game I platinumed, and with good reason. I was always in a weird in-between place when it came to superheros. I LOVED anything I could find on TV- TMNT, X-MEN, Batman: The Animated Series. But I never had access to the comics for some reason, and therefor I never fully got into the medium. inFamous gave me a chance to enjoy the true origin story of a superhero in it's original form. And I could shape the character into a hero or villain as I saw fit! Sure, to really rack up trophies and get super powerful you had to play a "good" and a "bad" playthrough, you couldn't really walk the grey moral line. But also most of the choices were pretty black and white, so there were rarely things that in my "I'm me, a nice, decent, non-asshat" where I wanted to make the "bad" choice.

This game gave a great story of being accused of being a criminal, only to find, slowly, that you have superpowers, and have to make the choice: do you return the vitriol humankind is giving you because they are scared? Or do you rise above it, and help them to spite themselves. Either choice is a tough one, and is legitimately made of dozens of smaller choices. This was the first game I played that gave me that kind of organic choice, and it 100% pulled me in. It will always have a special place to me as the first game that made me feel like I had control of the universe I was in.

OK, that's it for now, but there will be more of these quick hit reviews to come, with more custom box-art too.

Walking Dead is a very difficult thing to describe for the uninitiated. It is a comic that has been turned into both a game and a TV series. The game takes place within the same reality as the comic, where the TV show is essentially a reboot- same characters, but different timeline. It also, on the surface, is a zombie apocalypse game. In essence, however, it is a human civilization apocalypse game.

My wife asked me last night why I like all the zombie stuff I do: All the Walking Dead iterations, Shaun of the Dead, older Resident Evil games, the game Day Z; while I generally hate scary movies. I realized, while trying to explain it, that the whole zombie genre does a few things very differently than any other horror movie. There is the superficial layer where zombies are unique because they are dumb, slow monsters with a glaring weakpoint to be exploited- their only strength comes in numbers... and actual strength I suppose.

There are three ways zombie media interests me: primal survival, choices, and people. First, there is the CONSTANT question of if you could outrun the hoard. I've been hunting a few times, and was a boy scout, but if I was in the woods, could I make a shelter, hunt for food, and find drinkable water, all while NOT being eaten alive? Secondly, in zombie movies, I am constantly thinking about what I would do in a person's situation- hiding in the house could mean starvation, running to loot a grocery store could mean getting attacked by hoards, and running to the country could mean being killed by bandits. Now, I am not one of those people who has a Zombie survival plan, FYI, I am well aware that zombies are fake. I just cannot help but think "Oh, no man, its only two! Throw a brick to distract the far one, kill the first one then sneak up and kill the second. Using a gun right now is just DUMB!"

Lastly, the place where a really good piece of zombie fiction gets me is when the zombies are only a backdrop. The real threat in great zombie fiction is people. The more I thought about it, I realized that Zombie fiction is the new forefront of sci-fi. Sci-fi has a long tradition of pushing boundaries addressing social issues, and confronting political wrongs before the rest of culture can in a realistic setting. In most sci-fi this was done by taking you to a future where either a social injustice was corrected (Star Trek), or where it was made far worse via slippery-slope (1984). Great zombie works have the same ability, because it allows humanity to be stripped to its bear bones. What happens when someone watches their loved-ones turn against them? How hardened and unemotional do people get? In a time when the only hope is to band together, how tough is it to trust ANYONE?

What makes Walking Dead the comic great is that it hits all three aspects extremely well. Zombies are a threat, as is nature, but so are people, and choices have consequences. It works very well. Walking Dead the game does the same things, except you are the one making the choices, and with limited time. You have to make choices that could cost a life, or just effect a friendship. However, that relationship may later mean someone lives or dies. Walking Dead is a great zombie game, but it is more.

Without spoiling to many plot points, you play as Lee, a history professor from Macon, Georgia. You start the game in the back of a police car, after being arrested for murdering the man your wife was cheating on you with. Suddenly, the world is changed. Soon, you stumble into a house and find eight year-old Clementine home alone. Her parents are in Savannah, and you take her in to protect her. This is where the game really turns. You are no longer living for yourself alone, you are trying to protect this innocent girl. And you will get attached to her- this game is part zombie-game, part parent-simulator. Do you try to lie and comfort her, or do you tell her the scary truth? Do you yell at her for doing something risky, or stay calm and ask her not to do it more? All of these choices will have consequences, and combined with the fact that most have to be made in the span of 10 or so seconds, they quickly become very real.

Walking Dead is a great game. It has fun, engaging gameplay. There are some bugs occasionally, but most I had were minor. The thing that makes Walking Dead stand apart is it isn't just a great game.

Walking Dead is one of a very few games that I would recommend to anyone who says games cannot be art. I challenge you to play this game, and not be moved, to not be emotionally connected, to not feel. It transcends its media and becomes more than a game, it becomes an experience.

I haven't really written any game reviews, so you may not know much about my gaming history, unless we were friends on the old IGN blogs or Tinychat. I plan of writing reviews in the coming weeks, and I think one of the most important things to know about any reviewer is what they like and don't so you know how to skew your view based on how you compare to their views. For instance, I generally pay more attention to the reviews at IGN then at other outlets. It has little to do with who I think writes better, or is more professional, and everything to do with who I know. On my podcast subscription list is some stuff from Nerdist, WTF, Science Friday, and about six IGN podcasts. I have spent 400+ hours listening to Greg Miller talk about games (and Ryan Clement's future death via boating accident). Greg and I have similar tastes in games, save for the fact that I am a racing game fan (which he is not), and he is a wrestling game fan (which I am not). I know that if he loved Metal Gear Peace Walker, there is a DAMN good chance I'll like it a ton. I also know if he says he cannot get into Gran Turismo that it doesn't matter to me much.

If you are going to read my reviews, I want you to have context to put my review into, so here is my gaming history in a nutshell: I had a TI-99 since I can remember. I mostly remember a game titled "Alpiner", where you climbed a mountain endlessly avoiding landslides and abominable Snow-monsters. My dad also had a PC back then, which today is shocking because the family ONLY had one PC, but in the mid 80's it was kind of a big deal. I mostly played a game called "SOPWITH", a side-scrolling WWII plane game. "Castle" was a game that was semi-graphic (to avoid ogres who were just Angry-face text objects), and semi-text (to look for lockets and the like). I spent all the time I could looking for necklaces in fountains, blowing up tankers, and running from bears.

From Giantbomb.com

Then in 1988 or '89, I my parents got us an NES (WITH THE POWER PAD!!!!). That's when gaming really took me. It helped that I got it with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The original. A game so hard I still have not beat it to this day. I made it to the Mousers once, maybe twice, and lost both times. It's where I learned to enjoy a challenge in games (along with American Gladiators, which my friend Josh and I would rent every few weeks, and Battletoads, which we never got more than 50% through). I also had games like TMNTII, which the code for 9 lives and level select I remember to this day (B A B A Up Down B A Left Right B A), and Kirby's Adventure, both of which I could have played for days on end. These, along with titles like SMB and SMB3 shaped my young gaming self, and had me locked into Nintendo's clutches. The ORIGINAL console, and the games, are on a shelf behind me as I type. If I can get my stupid lockout chip working again and the contact board clean, it will rise again.

I'm not the only one who thought April was naked, right? From http://nesmemories.blogspot.com

Next came the SNES. Super Mario World, and Super Mario: The Lost Levels, were great. Super Mario Kart brought me into the world of racing games, and Quarterback Club made me start seeing the "AMAZING REALISM" that football games could bring. StarFox was probably my first "flight sim", and it is probably part of why I love a good flight-sim to this day. I beat that game COUNTLESS times, and never got sick of the amazing 3-D graphics, the crew of wingmen... it was simply amazing. The SNES is back at my parents, along with the N64.

I always preferred my N64 it to Josh's Playstation because the PS was primarily a single-player machine, where the N64 had good single-player games with AMAZING multiplayer modes, though I did love going to his place and spending hours controller swapping for Gran Turismo and listening to Garbage (that was a band back in the 90's). Goldeneye, and Mario Kart 64 were my go-to's, as they were for most. I spent countless hours with Mario Kart, finding every shortcut on Rainbow Road and Wario Stadium. And this was in the day when college email at Iowa State University (which was ranked in the top ten most "wired" schools or something at the time) was done through Tel-net... Basically you checked your email via DOS prompt. There was no Youtube walk-through to consult for the fastest route on Moo-Moo ranch, you had to find it yourself through hour after hour of repetitive play and an occasional friend who knew a guy who saw a thing in a magazine.

This overlapped with the GameCube/PS2 era- Gamecube came out just as I was leaving for college, where the N64 would keep power in the common room for years to come. I started with the gamecube only, with games like Rogue Squadron, Mario Kart Double Dash, Resident Evil 0, and the Metroid Prime series. This is when an ugly trend reared its head for a while. I had trouble finishing games, not because they were too hard, but because now with 10 hour games-but a lack of extra content-I never wanted to finish a game, because at that point, it was over, and I knew I would probably never go back to it. I knew I wouldn't put another 30 hours into Metroid Prime, so I didn't want to lose my ability to drop an hour by beating it. It was a dumb, stupid cycle, but one that didn't really end for another generation and a half... Its also when the trend of internet piracy was at its peak. Napster was a thing- there was a guy on the Iowa State intranet with something like 2 TERABytes of movies! This is in the days when having a 32 GB Hard-drive was a big deal. Needless to say, I suddenly found that I could play ANY game I wanted on my PC, ALL FOR FREE! So I did... a lot. I soon was no longer attending Iowa State...

Midtown Madness 2- The game that made me FINALLY love European cars. From a site with popups. I'm not sending you there.

I got a Wii on launch Day. The first system I ever bought on Launch Day (the Vita is the only other system I ever bought at launch), and it had some great games. Everyone loved Mario Galaxy, but it also had some great underrated titles like Endless Ocean and Elebits. This is the time that I started becoming and IGN fan, with the Nintendo podcast hosted by Matt Casamassina and Mark Bozon. I loved how I could connect to them as reviewers by listening to the show and getting to know their tastes. I took a chance on No More Hero's because of IGN, and never looked back... it was a blast. Soon, the question came: 360, or PS3?

The long and short of it is, after listening to months of both TRL and Beyond! on IGN, I sided with PS3. The exclusives won me over. I knew I wanted Gran Turismo, and I loved the first Metal Gear on my second try (I was to young and impatient for a stealth game when I first tried it in High School). I do now have a 360, I played some of Halo Reach and Gears 3, but they just don't grab me- Halo is to spray-and-pray for me, just like COD Multiplayer. I like my shooters strategic- like MAG or Battlefield 3. Between UnCharted 1-3, Little Big Planet, the PSP Patapon series (Sony... really... get ON this! Where is Patapon Vita or PS3/4?), InFamous 1-2, Heavy Rain, and now Journey and Unfinished Swan; I couldn't be happier with the choice I made in the first place.

If I think about it, I want my games to have a creative hook. It can be literal creativity (Little Big Planet and Mod-Nation Racers), Strategic shooters, racers that are either straight simulation (Gran Turismo) or off the wall (Burnout Paradise or Mario Kart), Sports games with depth (I prefer NCAA to Madden, in part because I can take a team ranked 123rd in the country and make them a POWERHOUSE), or an amazing story. Don't get me wrong, I have my simple pleasure games too- I probably logged 300+ hours into Day of Defeat on Steam- a simple WWII themed FPS that was based on flag capture (which is still my favorite multiplayer mode in shooters)- but in general I want there to be something to grab me, to make me think about... something.

This was probably more than you really wanted to know, but now you do. So when you see me say that I LOVE "X" about game "Y", you have SOME idea of what that means compared to your tastes. I hope to have some time to not only review newer games, but also some older titles soon to really let you get a feel for who I am as a gamer.

This fall, I went into Manhattan to see the 9/11 memorial. As a Landscape Architect(ish) it was something that I thought was important to see, and while I was no where near New York in 2001, I still vividly remember the day, as I'm sure many do. It was a pretty great space, though it probably would have been better, IMO, if the design stayed more true to the original ideas, and wasn't pared down via Design-By-Committee.

While that was a pretty good experience, Something else caught my eye that day. Walking down through Wall Street, a few streets were blocked off. I thought that was a little odd, but kept moving as it was towards the end of the Occupy push, so I figured it was for that. Then I saw a pickup with a machine gun mounted in the back parked across the street form the stock exchange(!).

Then I saw it.

Then I saw the fake snow, and signs pointing past the fences to the set. After a bit of walking, I found more GPD cars, and a crowd of people. Then, about two blocks away I saw a crowd of people in front of at William and Wall (About a block from Federal Hall, site of the famous Metal Gear Solid 2 ending).

Initiate zoom lens:

IT'S THE BATMOBILE!

IT'S THREE BATMOBILES!

After that things were much less exciting. Some smoke and snow started to be blown around, and we saw flashes of a massive fistfight, but that was it. Still, seeing six GPD cars, and a FEW Batmobiles is never a bad day.